


Six for gold

by SharpestRose



Category: The Ring (2002)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"One for sorrow, Two for mirth," she whispers in his ear as if she's cursing him. "Three for death, four for birth. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret, never to be told. There aren't any more after seven. I waited. It was cold, and wet, and dark, and I waited. I knew Mommy would come and fetch me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six for gold

"Your Mommy is a good mommy. Do you love her?"

"Don't talk about her." Aidan glares at Samara and looks out at the rolling, violent waves of the shore. It's dawn, or maybe dusk, the light grey-blue and the wind whipping through the two children as they stand barefoot on the sand.

"It's strange," she goes on, ignoring his words. "She didn't want you, did she? You were a mistake. I never knew children could be mistakes before."

"Stop talking about her!" Aidan shouts, wrapping his arms around himself and shivering. They're wearing bathing costumes, the dark green board shorts from last summer clinging wetly to his goosepimpled legs. Samara is in a white one-piece with tiny ruffles on the legs, and isn't even damp. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Somewhere safe. It isn't ever dark here." Samara smiles, and Aidan shivers even more. Her hair obscures half her face, but one bright eye is fixed on him. "I'm sharing it with you."

"I don't want it." Aidan backs away a step, only to be followed until they're exactly the same distance apart as before. Samara will follow him forever, Aidan knows that somewhere deep in his head.

"Oh, but you do. Everyone does. Your whole life, you look for it. Every time you close your eyes."

With a final derisive glance in his direction, Samara walks down to the tideline and scratches at the sand with a stick. Begins to draw a tree, the branches reaching up and out. Her feet have no wet sand stuck to them. She's never wet here, Aidan knows that too.

"Did you? When you were alive, did you look for this place?" he shouts against the wind. She doesn't answer.

"No. She never slept." A new voice, and Aidan turns, and feels his stomach drop out of him.

"Katie!" he shouts, running to her. Samara continues to draw her tree, humming a song under her breath and watching them with a steady and passionless gaze. Katie's wearing a silvery sundress made of a patchwork of fabrics, her hair pulled back off her face in a bun. Aidan hugs her and hugs her, and when they pull apart finally he notices that her nose is bleeding, covering her chin and mouth in blood.

"She brings the children here, Aidan. She built it for us," Katie explains. He doesn't understand, and this must show on his face because Katie turns and looks at Samara. "Tell him. Explain."

"But he doesn't need to know. Only I do, and I already understand," the little girl sing-songs, growing tired of her pattern-making and tossing the stick aside. "Keep away from the water, God grant you a daughter. Frolic in brine, goblins be thine..." pausing in her song, Samara twirls around with her arms outstretched. Aidan has never seen her play, in all his visions. Her giggles send more chills along his clammy skin. "One day, he'll know. You'll all know. Mommy will know, and Daddy will know."

"You killed Noah."

"He loved the horses more than me."

Aidan's too angry to be afraid now. He storms down the beach and grabs Samara's hands because he's too small to reach her shoulders, forcing her to stop spinning. "That wasn't him. That was Richard."

"He said that's who he was." Speech becomes singing again. "He said, he said, the blackbirds told me." Samara squeezes his wrist and Aidan shouts at the sudden burning. "Daddy didn't know that I would find him as soon as I got out of the dark place."

Aidan wants more than anything to wake from this nightmare. Samara's voice is like glass on his ears, cold and sharp and shattering into splinters.

"One for sorrow, Two for mirth," she whispers in his ear as if she's cursing him. "Three for death, four for birth. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret, never to be told. There aren't any more after seven. I waited. It was cold, and wet, and dark, and I waited. I knew Mommy would come and fetch me." Samara's lips curl up in a wide grin and Aidan wrenches his hands away from her in terror. "I love Mommy. Then it wasn't cold anymore, it wasn't wet, and it wasn't dark. I made this place, where it's never dark. When it was dark in the barn I'd turn the TV on so that there was somebody with me. I wanted a TV down there, in the dark place, but there wasn't anything but me and the water."

"Katie..." Aidan turns, wanting his familiar cousin near him, anything to keep him safe from this little girl with the long black hair and the high laugh. But Katie's gone.

"Katie's Mommy was too late. I knew she would be. When she came to fetch her, it was too late. Katie was already here, in the warm place." Samara's voice isn't wavering between mirth and hysterics anymore. She sounds almost ordinary. "But your Mommy, she's a good mommy. It was nearly too late but she just made it. I knew Mommy would come and fetch me, you see. I waited and waited, and she came."

"She found you before the seven days was up," Aidan whispers.

"I can't last any longer than that. I'm very small," Samara explains as if she's talking about the most mundane subjects in the world. Aidan's skin is still crawling, but he's not afraid of her anymore. It would be like being afraid of thunderstorms, or the dark. "A good mommy knows that. Your Mommy knew that, she came down into the water, and picked me up, and even though I had been waiting so long I knew she would come. I knew it. If it had been any longer, it might have been too late."

Aidan catches a flash then, a flash of what it was to be Samara. Down in the water, marking the days off, singing softly and blinking in the blackness. Knowing, hoping, _aching_ that Mommy would come and push the lid free and rescue her. For seven days, before the dark and the cold and the wet went away and there was just warm sand and soft sunlight. And in that flash Aidan feels how much Samara must hate all those who were too late, who didn't get there in the seven days. Who left her in the dark. But now it's broken, because Mommy finally came. Rachel picked up the little girl and held her, and they pulled her out of the well.

"But it's over now. We got you out in time. Why Noah...?"

"Oh, that's different." Samara shakes her head. "I was angry at Daddy. He had to suffer. He thought he could get away from me, with the water and the TVs and the sparks. But nobody can get away. I never sleep."

Even with the malice in her voice, Aidan can't find any fear anymore. Rather, it all seems horrifyingly sad.

"So there's no more? But... my arm... the burn." Aidan holds his arm up, the red welts puckered on his waterlogged skin.

"One more thing. Then it will be over. You have a good Mommy and a bad Daddy, just like me. I chose you because we're just the same."

"I'm not the same as you."

"Oh, but you are." Samara smiles.

Aidan wakes up with a shout, knowing before he's even opened his eyes that Rachel is there by his side.

"What is it, honey? Aidan?" she says, panic in her voice.

"I know how to stop it," he says simply, pushing the covers down and climbing out of bed. "Come on."

The beach is nicer than the one from the dream, Aidan thinks sadly that perhaps Samara had never seen a really nice one to use as a template for her own creation. The sky is bright blue, and the waves are tipped with white foam. The urn is small and surprisingly light, made of some sort of silvery metal that glints in the sun. The wind catches the ashes as Aidan opens his fingertips, sends them whirling across the yellow sand.

"She didn't like the dark," he tells his mother. "She didn't want it anymore."

"You're growing so fast." Rachel pushes Aidan's fringe back on his forehead. It falls down into his eyes again almost immediately. The locks look almost black against his fair skin. "Aidan, your arm."

He holds it up to inspect. The marks are gone. He nods.

"It's over, then," Rachel says with a relieved sigh. "Thank God."

Aidan turns away, looking out at the ocean, blinking in the light. His fingernails have begun to bleed, but he doesn't let her see.


End file.
